Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012)

When last we left this franchise, I was less than stoked with the Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme bait-and-switch that I felt had been perpetrated on me.  Okay, that's not entirely true, we were looking at the two made-for-TV sequels, but when we last left this franchise with Dolph and Van Damme, that's where we were.  I went into this new one more okay with the potential for a bait-and-switch, and I was hoping the addition of Scott Adkins would mitigate any issues I might have with said bait-and-switch.  Then there was the near 2-hour running time: that was a little daunting, but as the DTVC, I was ready to climb that mountain.

Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning stars Scott Adkins as a family man whose home is invaded by Van Damme and some thugs, and his wife and daughter brutally murdered in front of him.  After recovering from a coma, an FBI agent tells him who Van Damme is, and he searches him out for revenge.  At the same time, Van Damme and Dolph have teamed up, and are recruiting other government universal soldiers to their cause.  What is their goal?  Who knows, but somehow Mr. Adkins and they are on a collision course to wackiness.



So yes, we again had limited scenes with Dolph and Van Damme, but Adkins as the lead more than mitigated that issue.  In the behind the scenes extras, director and writer John Hyams said he understood that the film hinged on who they cast for that part, and he was right, because without Adkins I think I'm here again complaining that there wasn't enough Dolph and Van Damme.  Beyond getting past the bait-and-switch, I can say we also had an all around better picture than the one before it.  The fight scenes were excellent, including one between Adkins and Andrei The Pitbull Arlovski in a sporting goods shop that was what I've been looking for from the 21st century DTV action flick, totally inspired and next level.  Also, we had a great Noir-ish amnesiac storyline featuring Adkins that really kept me wanting to figure out what was going to happen next, which, again, wasn't anywhere in the previous film.  Also, this was a lot darker, but not in a faux-edge grafted in torture scene kind of way.  The whole thing was macabre, bloody, and violent, and it all worked for me, even as squeamish as I am, because it was always there.  Hyams hits a home run here, he gets it right everywhere, which is refreshing and exciting considering what we usually see in the modern DTV action world.

While Dolph only has, as far as I can tell, three scenes, they're all great.  (Also, in the commentary he does with John Hyams, we find out there was another scene that was cut.)  His first one involves a great fight with Arlovski, which looks spectacular between the set, Dolph's wardrobe, and the way he and Arlovski get after it.  Then he has a speech to the other universal soldiers in the "can you dig it?" mold that only he could've pulled off, and he does.  Then there's his fight with Adkins, which is equal parts awesome and Dolph providing comic relief.  If you check out the extras it gets even better.  In one, the director tells him that his image on screen will become Van Damme's, and he says "I turn into Jean-Claude?  Then you'll have to move the camera down here."  We also get to see his process in making fight scenes.  The guy's muscle memory is so acute, he picks up the choreography quickly, which allows them to go that next level with his scenes.  Again, just proving why he's the Babe Ruth of DTV.  (And if you watch the film with he and Hyams doing commentary, while he says at the beginning he's only going to be there for the first 30 minutes, he actually stays for the whole thing, and he's great.)



I'm going to save my paragraph on the film's other Hall of Famer, Van Damme, for the seventh paragraph, because it contains spoilers, but if you're curious and haven't seen this yet, he was great as well, and well worth watching this film for. Let's look at Scott Adkins though.  With so many of our big action names in their 50s and 60s, there's been a push to get to the next generation.  While Adkins doesn't have a name from a previous career that DTV distributors like to throw on the covers of their films to sell them, for us cats who know and buy this stuff, he's as good as it gets right now, and we're all excited to see what he has coming next.  His fight with Arlovski was, as I said above, next level stuff; his fights with Dolph and Van Damme more than fulfilled my expectations; and then his big one where he's taking out a bunch of universal soldiers was fantastic too.  We found out in the extras that he did this on a torn ACL-- that includes a sweet frankensteiner!  Maybe he doesn't have a name from a previous career, but he's building a great current one for himself, and this one performance was a really solid addition to his CV.

Arlovski was a house as well-- as you may have noticed when I brought him up in two separate fight scenes above.  I don't think he has any dialog, which might make him all the more imposing.  On top of the scenes I mentioned, he does one with Roy Jones Jr.-- yes, that Roy Jones Jr.-- which was really cool, with Roy delivering some nice punches.  In the extras, they talked about how Arlovski was up for anything, and while I don't know if he can carry a film on his own the way Adkins can, as a baddie like this, he's great.  A few other things from the extras: the director was afraid to ask Roy Jones Jr. to do the scene, because it would be his only one and he just gets his ass kicked, but he was all about it, even driving from Pensacola, FL to Baton Rouge to do it; and our friend Simon at Explosive Action (who was lucky enough to see a big screen screening of this!) said this was edited for the US market, and I couldn't believe him because it was pretty bloody to begin with, but in the extras we see an effect where a dummy Arlovski is smashed in the head with a baseball bat by Adkins, and the head explodes-- that was cut in the version I saw.



SPOILER ALERT!!!!   SPOILER ALERT!!!!   SPOILER ALERT!!!!   SPOILER ALERT !!!!
I know with that picture above, you're expecting a great comedic paragraph on how Van Damme was auditioning to Lucas to be Lucas-ed in as Anakin Skywalker in the next Return of the Jedi re-edit; but that can only go too far, and I wanted to address how Van Damme goes out in this flick.  They go with a Heart of Darkness approach, where Van Damme channels his inner Brando, and after a fight, gives up and allows Adkins to kill him.  According to Hyams, Van Damme made him rewrite it multiple times.  One could make the argument that he didn't want to go out in a way that makes it look like he got beaten because he's an egomaniac; but I think that Van Damme has earned the right to lose the way he wants to lose in a movie like this, and it fits with his character that he'd have been sick of being a universal soldier, and needed Adkins to give him the warrior's death that he deserved.  The whole thing worked for me, and I have no complaints.
END SPOILER!!!!  END SPOILER!!!!  END SPOILER!!!!  END SPOILER!!!!

Let's wrap this up, because this has become a big post.  As you've probably figured out, I'm exceedingly happy with this movie.  Yes, it was a little gorier than I like, but it was a gory that worked, along with everything else.  The actors, the direction, the cinematography-- none of that gimmicky shaky cam--, the fights, the story, it was all great.  If more DTV actioners could get it half as right as this did, I think we'd all be a lot happier.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1659343/

Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business (1999)

If you haven't read my Universal Soldiers II post yet, that one gives the back story about how we got here with me reviewing these two films. It's not like it's a very interesting story, but that's it. Considering I don't want to repeat myself, I thought I'd talk about something else in this opening paragraph. I think I'm going to get sushi with my friends tomorrow night, and I may fork over the cash to get some sea urchin. I feel like I can get myself to like it, but I don't know. Does anyone else who gets sushi like the sea urchin? I've never done it with soy sauce and wasabi before, so I'll try that tomorrow and get back to you on how it was in the comments section.

Universal Soldier III picks up where part 2 leaves off. Matt Battaglia and Chandra West are still on the run from the law and still trying to expose the UniSol project, which is now helmed by Burt Reynolds after Gary Busey died and passed the baddie baton to him. Reynolds has some new tricks up his sleeve. First, he has his crack scientist creating a clone of Jeff Wincott. Neat. He also has this thing called "Sleepers", which are people who are technically UniSols but exist in society like regular people until called into action. With all this crap going on, can West and Battaglia survive?



This one is a little bit better, and little bit more fun, but still pretty wide of the mark. It's just one of those things that, as a two-part syndicated TV episode it wouldn't have been that bad, but as a movie, not enough happens. I can deal with only a couple fight scenes in a 42-minute TV show, but in a near 90 minute movie, it's kind of boring. Throw in the bad construct with Wincott as a clone. The whole idea is supposed to be that he's a clean slate-- because, as a clone, he'd be a whole new human being. For some reason though, even as a clone he still remembers the family he technically never knew. As silly as it sounds, it's also a waste of what could've been a cool element. The Sleepers thing is another one that I assume would've come into play much more on a TV show, but in the movie, it's just something that was poorly fleshed out. I guess the only thing I can say is, part III more than part II shows what might have been had the TV show been made, but still, the fact that it was supposed to be a TV show and not a movie remains a detriment.

You gotta like Burt Reynolds though as the baddie. I can't think of a better person for Busey to pass the baton to than him. He kind of does a Dr. Claw thing for most of the film, hanging out in a dark room, smoking a cigar and giving orders-- all he needed was the cat. Then he appears at the very end when Battaglia and West confront him. Imagine him as a baddie for the whole series? They could do like Suzanne Sommers on Three's Company when she was off the show but still under contract, so they had her character sent away, then she'd go in each week and talk to the other characters as she were on the telephone. They could just have Reynolds in an office smoking a cigar and giving orders each week, then maybe have him out and about for the season finale.



Chandra West showed up again in this one, though there was a lot more emotional bunk that didn't really work, and even she couldn't save it from sauteed in wrong sauce-dom. The one thing I like about these two sequels is that they're almost more about her character as the protagonist than Luc Devereaux, which is a cool change of pace. The problem is, though, that an action movie needs to be action driven, and she isn't doing the action, Battaglia is. Somehow the first Universal Soldier mitigated a UniSol Devereaux as the main character better than these two sequels, which really just relied on West for the film's personality. So maybe it wasn't so much as cool change of pace as much as it was laziness in the writing, and West made it seem like a change of pace with the way she carried it.

In my part 2 review I didn't mention Matt Battaglia at all, so I figured I'd do that here. First off, I didn't know that he was a former NFL player. He also has had a pretty prodigious TV acting career, which is probably why he was chosen for this role, considering this was meant to be a TV show. The third thing is that he was in both Showgirls and the Dolph Lundgren flick Joshua Tree, aka Army of One. As you may or may not know, that is the most popular Dolph post of all time, and it has nothing to do with Dolph Lundgren. I'm not going to say why it's the most popular post, only because if I do, those key words will turn up in more searches and send people here erroneously, and I don't want to do that.



Finally, I want to discuss Wincott's role. I have this rule when it comes to holding movies accountable for inconceivability called the Gilligan's Island Rule. It came from a stand-up comedian who talked about watching the Globe Trotters episode of Gilligan, and how, when one of the Globe Trotters was injured and Gilligan was subbed in, the comedian's friend said "yeah right, like they'd let Gilligan play," to which the comedian replied "wait, you've been good with all of this so far, but the idea of bringing Gilligan off the bench for the Globe Trotters was too inconceivable?" I thought about that as I was going to give this movie crap for not understanding how cloning works when Wincott suddenly remembers his family that really isn't his family, you know, like "okay Matt, you're good with bringing soldiers back from the dead, erasing their memories, and injecting them with stuff that makes them super strong, but Wincott remembering his family after he was cloned, that's what did it to you?" But then I remembered the movie itself saying "he's a clean slate." He's a clean slate... See, that's where I do draw the line, you can't break your own rules. Obviously the movie made Wincott's new incarnation too strong for Battaglia's character to take down, so they just added in that remembering his family thing to get them out of it. That I do have a problem with.

That was an enormous paragraph, so I'll wrap this up quick. Not as bad as part II, but still not great; no longer on Watch Instantly, probably not worth your time. I'd stay away.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0186655/

Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms (1998)

I'm not sure why, but these two Universal Soldier made for The Movie Channel sequels are some of the most requested at the DTVC. I'd always kind of just stuck them aside, figuring I'd get to them eventually. Unfortunately, Netflix decided they were going to put my feet to the fire by letting me know that they were taking both movies off of Watch Instantly, and I knew I'd never bother getting them any other way if I didn't see them on Watch Instantly, so here we are, finally making them happen, starting with part 2.

Universal Soldier 2 picks up where part 1 left off, with Matt Bataglia as Luc Devereaux and Chandra West as Veronica the reporter. Gary Busey, who runs the UniSol program, is taking it private, hoping to sell the soldiers to the highest bidder. He's able to get Bataglia back by some homing device, but when Chandra West goes in after him, she saves his brother, played by Jeff Wincott, instead. Now the two brothers have to take Busey down before the UniSol technology winds up in the wrong hands.



I guess this was like a couple of episodes for a proposed TV show mushed together, a case of someone trying to make lemonade out of some lemons. Unfortunately we all ended up with burning eyes from the citric acid squirted into them that was this movie. There is virtually no action until the end. Even if it's two episodes of a TV show, episode one would've sucked for that alone. There's only so much "Luc Devereaux trying to be human" we can endure before we need it broken up with something else. Then you have a totally wasted Jeff Wincott, a sick martial artist who spends most of the movie strapped to a chair. Then you have to buy Matt Bataglia as the hero, which maybe you can do with more action, but the way this went like a human interest piece-- let's just say the whole thing was sautéed in wrong sauce.

I've read somewhere that Van Damme joked about how all his movies spawned sequels that starred actors other than him. Bloodsport had Daniel Bernhardt, Kickboxer had Sasha Mitchell; but what makes these two TV sequels to Universal Soldier different is that Matt Bataglia plays the actual character Van Damme played in the original. Something about that had to have upset Van Damme, because he felt the need to right the wrongs of these movies by rebooting them the same year the second one came out. Also, Van Damme was losing his box office relevance, so maybe he thought he could recapture that by reclaiming one of his more notable characters. Either way, all three movies turned out bad, and it was probably good that Van Damme took ten years before he revisited it. It would've been cool though to see what, if done well, a Universal Soldier syndicated TV show would've looked like. Put it on the Action Pack with Hercules.



Gary Busey as the main baddie is pretty sweet, but we expect that going in. Are there better ways to get your Busey fix? No doubt. But how many times have we seen Busey's name on the marquee only to find it's a bait-and-switch? Exactly, so at least here we know he's holding it down. I also really liked Chandra West as Ally Walker's character from the first one. Had this been turned into a TV show, it would've been her more than anyone else that people would've tuned into on a weekly basis, because she anchored any scene she was in with her wit and assertiveness-- let's just say Matt Bataglia would've looked a lot worse without her guiding him through their scenes.

I can only imagine Jeff Wincott signed on for this hoping he'd have regular work on a TV show, because this wasn't a good look for him. That's too bad, considering his character covered some uncharted Universal Soldier territory-- a UniSol that hadn't had his memory wiped, and was just dropped into the modern world after having been frozen since the late 50s. Why they didn't explore that more is beyond me. That would've made for much more effective padding. Also, Wincott could carry that kind of thing better. How can you not see Wincott as a hard-nosed soldier from the 50s interacting with late-90s America? Apparently the people who made it couldn't see that.



Finally, I want to talk about something that really irked me. (And no, I'm not talking about that tiny dude they tried to throw on us as Dolph Lundgren.) Near the end, West and Battaglia need to get their hands on transportation, so they steal the camper from a honeymooning couple while they're at a rest stop. Of course, the thing gets shot up and destroyed. What a shitty thing to do. Those are our heroes? Ruining a couple's honeymoon? Who writes crap like that? The bad guys are supposed to steal a honeymooning couple's camper, not the good guys.

I could go on, but I better wrap this up here. This is a painfest, mostly because nothing happens. We see too much of Battaglia riding on a train or Wincott strapped to a chair than we do good solid action. And as a story, this didn't cut it to be able to manage that long with nothing happening. Maybe I should've held out longer on these.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0186654/

Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009)

Universal Soldier: Regeneration is set to be released on February 2nd, but thanks to RepoGenetic, one of our readers, we have an early screening, so I can give you my review before it's released. This is a first at the DTVC.

Universal Soldier: Regeneration is about a Russian separatist group that uses a Universal Soldier, played by Andrei "The Pit Bull" Arlovski, to kidnap the Prime Minister's kids. When the US government sends some of their own and they fail, they realize they have to call in the best, Van Damme. This is a bit of an issue, because a psychiatrist in Switzerland is trying to make him a normal member of society. It's only an issue to pad out the film, of course, and he eventually saves the day. Oh, and Dolph Lundgren's in this for the last 30 minutes.



If this wasn't billed as a Van Damme Dolph Lundgren flick, it wouldn't have been that bad. Problem is, it was, and was only able to deliver on a Dolph and Van Damme bait-and-switch. This was supposed to be a big deal for the Muscles from Brussels, and he's maybe in it for half the film, and of that, much of it is spent in a lab or doing Rorschach tests. The lack of Dolph hurt more, because his two or three scenes were great. I could see Van Damme being afraid that Dolph would show him up, but it was even worse because Dolph had only a fraction of the screen time he did, and he still delivered a more entertaining performance.

I'm not sure if you've seen the trailer, but you can check it out here. It gives the impression that a good chunk of the film is Van Damme fighting both Dolph and Arlovski. The truth is that's only the last 15 minutes or so. It's like they took everything that made the first one great, and replaced it with a lot of blah, and hoped that last fifteen would be enough. It was like buying a bag of Doritos and finding out most of the bag was filled with foam packing peanuts. It's amazing how if that happened at the store, we'd be up in arms and demand our money back, but when a movie does it we have no recourse. I'm not saying those few Doritos at the bottom weren't great as always, I'm just saying if I paid for what I think is a full bag of Doritos, and if the bag tells me there's a full bag of Doritos in there, if most of the bag is packing peanuts, I'm pissed.



If in my top ten DTV films of the 2000s I said Dolph answered the challenge of Steven Seagal's entry into the world of DTV action and retained his throne, Dolph started off 2010 showing Van Damme what's up too. At the 30 minute mark, when he makes his first appearance, it's like a dad going outside to show the neighborhood kids how to really play football. "You kids are cute trying to make your little DTV actioner, but let Daddy show you how it's really done." It's hard for me, because I've never had to deal with a Dolph bait-and-switch before, so I don't know how to feel. I mean, I guess with all the films he's done recently, something had to give-- one of them had to have less of him than the others-- it's just the dishonesty that irks me. Say in the trailer and on the cover "And a special appearance by Dolph Lundgren". I mean, that's all it was, not a starring role by any stretch.

And Van Damme wasn't in it much more than Dolph. Like Dolph, his only good scenes come at the very end too. He has one early where he beats up the mob boss from Direct Contact, but that's just him beating on a defenseless bar owner. His fight scenes with Dolph and Arlovski were good, but kind of muted because the guys were all wearing bulky army suits. See Jean-Claude, fight scenes aren't shot with shirtless actors in order to show off their pecs to the ladies, they're also shot that way to make it easier for the actors to move, which makes the action better. They might as well have been fighting in Godzilla suits here.



Now don't get me wrong, this had plenty of bright spots. The fight between Dolph and Van Damme had an amazing ending that I won't give away. Arlovski's fighting translated very well on-screen from it's UFC roots. I actually saw him in real life at Mohegan Sun in 2005 when he fought at UFC 55 and defended his title in 15 seconds against Paul Buentello. He ate at the same restaurant me and my buddy ate at. Anyway, the story itself and direction wasn't that bad for a DTV actioner. Had they been a little more honest with how they were going to use Dolph Lundgren, I might not have been as hard on it. Sure, it was plenty silly and unrealistic, but that stuff's okay. One other thing that wasn't, though: this tool bag army dude who gets killed by Arlovski seems like the guy Dolph and Van Damme were supposed to be passing the torch to for any future Universal Soldier films, as he's shown in the Universal Soldier program at the end. Not only that, but this tool bag was in the film more than Dolph and Van Damme, which hurt my sensibilities. (I want to make clear, I don't think the actor personally was a tool bag, just the character.)

Final verdict: as a DTV actioner on its own, you could do a lot worse; but as a Van Damme or Dolph film, it sucked hardcore. I've been around this DTV block plenty of times, as have a lot of our readers, and lying to them about who's in the film and for how long is a bad move. It's one thing to pull a Rutger Hauer or Gary Busey bait-and-switch, but to do it with Dolph is just evil. Not only that, but it wrecks any credibility you might have with a movie that wasn't that bad.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1288403/